Easter opens up special opportunities for volunteers to serve. But these new opportunities create special challenges for schedulers. Use the tips below to ensure your Easter scheduling goes smoothly.

Create “Yearly Services”: Before you create your schedule containing your Easter dates, build your Easter services in the Service Times pane as new “Yearly Services.” Once you create these services, they will appear in your schedule each year to come. MSP will even remind you to change the date of the service for future years.

Create “One-Time Services”: If you have already created your schedule but do not have your Easter services in the system yet, there is another option for you! You will need to create your services directly on the schedule. Just find the date where one of these special services occurs and click “New Service.” These services will not repeat next year, though. So you’ll still want to go to the Service Times pane and create your Yearly services so you’re set for years to come!

Adjust Volunteer Preferences: If you have manually added a service to the schedule and are planning on auto-scheduling based on your volunteers’ preferences, you will want to check out the “Treat as” dropdown in this window to be sure the correct volunteers are scheduled. If you want any of your volunteers to be scheduled for any of your special services, regardless of service preferences, you will want to double check your Scheduler Settings to ensure they are correct.